Collectible Card Club

 Where oh where to begin?

Many card collectors maybe aware of Collectible Card Club a subscription box service. As a member each month they will send you a box of unopened packs of cards. They have the 4 major US sports: Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Hockey plus Soccer and Gaming. They offer a selection of 3 membership tiers: Silver 5 packs $24.95, Gold 10 packs $42.95, Platinum 15 packs $60.95. You can choose which individual sport flavor you want or a 3 sport Baseball, Football & Basketball box. Plus you choose from Vintage (1999 on back to probably early 1980s. I think they have stated 1983 is as far back as they have gone), or Modern (2000 and up), or a mix of the two.

Now here is where things get interesting. Almost 3 years ago, back in Sept 2019 I received a box from The CCC. I did not order the box it was sent to me as a sort of promo for bloggers I think. I don't recall if I received an email or responded to some promo they were having but anyway I currently have a box sitting unopened still in it's yellow/orange mailing package. I had planed on doing a spectacular blog post about opening it that was to include a video busting the box and the subsequent packs inside, including scans of everything during the process. I nixed that idea due to all the time it would take to work on it. 

Flashforward to recent months as I have seen more and more UTube videos and blog posts of others busting these boxes and repack products like Repacked Wax and well I got the bug for it. So I set up a Platinum Vintage Baseball sub and a Gold Vintage Football sub. This way it is less likely I will get brands that I don't particularly like such as Chrome, & Draft editions. There may be a few as those trends started in the 1990s. Anyway for brands I don't like I will put those packs aside as traders or toss them up on Ebay maybe.

My first two subscription boxes arrived Friday 10 June. So now I am a Collectible Card Club Card Carrying Member even though I probably shouldn't spend so much on it..

I was going to include one of my first CCC Box Breaks for this post but I haven't started opening them yet. I have 3 to do sometime soon.

Return of the Bullpen Cart

OK this is ancient news since it happened back in 2018. For some baseball fans it isn't anything special to write about, but to some old-timers like myself it reaches back to our childhoods. I'm talking about the bullpen carts, modified golf carts designed to look like a motorized batting helmet. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s the MLB had bullpen carts to escort relief pitchers onto the field. Actually now-days they drive around the warning track. They probably did that back then as well, my recollection of them are more vivid because of the plastic toys of the time. More so the NFL helmet carts which were the carts they drive onto the field to take severely injured players off the field. The football carts of course had that full football helmet design. Back in the day the baseball carts were more shaped like a baseball cap and the carts for both sports looked a bit bulky.

So for the 2018 baseball season the bullpen cart returned. The design uses a batting helmet for the main body and the support bars are shaped like bats. The Arizona Diamondbacks were the team to debut the new wave of bullpen carts. If memory serves it was the Washington Nationals then closer Sean Doolittle who was the first pitcher to use it. Maybe he was the first visiting pitcher.

Long story short Topps made a Topps Now card to celebrate the event (there is even an Allen & Ginter card that I plan on getting) I eventually got it. I waited way too long to get it at the original under ten dollars prices. I even went through a period of it not being available on Ebay for a few months. When it finally did come back the prices were super high, higher than I like to pay. Anyway I eventually paid $15 for a copy. I almost had to go up to $20 or more. Also of interest with this card is the seller sent the Topps Now packet "case" the cards come in when you get them directly from Topps and not from some dealer who has already opened the pack to scan the card for their listings.

So here is the card:
Front:

Back:

and the packet/envelope front:

Secret Santa 2017: Walked The Plank? NO He Homered!

HO HO HO. It's Cardsmas in January? February? Well not really but it is now that I am posting my Ill-Gotten Holiday Pirate Booty from last year's Card Exchange Apocalypse. As many of you bloggers out there know Matt from "Bob Walk The Plank" hosted a Blogger's Secret Santa Gift Exchange for the 2017 Holiday Season. Think a White Elephant Yankee Gift Exchange on PEDs or more accurately ON 2.5" x 3.5" pieces of Cardboard, and memorabilia sometimes smaller sometimes larger. Mostly sports related sometimes not.

I was a little hesitant about signing up because I am still delinquent on some cardboard trades in the trading card universe from several years ago now. A few I have made up some I have not. I have to remind myself of that occasionally in the hopes I'll speed up my recovery efforts.

I "blogged" about my Secret Santa Mail Day at my usual spots on TCC and TCZ. Those are mostly just listings of what I got with some detail, but rarely any pics. The true blogging with pics happens here. This post has extra Holiday Fat Pics.

On Saturday 23 Dec 2017 I  received my Blogger Secret Santa package to me on the same day I sent my Secret Santa package out to Greg. The small package came from Tim B. of "I love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning" blog.

He hit a multi-run Homer I'd say it was a 3 runner. Total of 38 cards at least one from each of the 4US sports food groups some PC snacks and niche noschs.

BASEBALL: 27 cards the bulk of the package 1 or 2 dupes 3 at the very most.

2008 Donruss Threads Baseball: 50 Frank Howard Washington (dupe) No problem it's Hondo one of my fave Washington Senators of All-Time.

2012 Bowman Chrome Baseball: 61 Gio Gonzalez Nationals (possible dupe)
2014 Bowman Baseball: 55 Ian Desmond Nationals Blue Parallel 074/500

2015 Topps Chrome Baseball: 56 Ian Desmond Nationals
2015 Topps Baseball: National League: NL-9 Bryce Harper Nationals
2015 Topps Baseball: First Pitch: FP-22 Lars Ulrich Musician Giants - I love the First Pitch cards. I need to double check which ones I still need to get.

2015 Topps Baseball Update: Gold Parallel: US300 Max Scherzer Nationals AS Game 1064/2015

2016 Panini Black Friday Baseball: 19 Stephen Strasburg Washington - Wow this is one of the best Non-licensed Panini Baseball cards I've seen in a while. Almost looks like a licensed card. In fact I thought it was one at first glance then I saw it was Panini and just said "Washington".

2016 Topps Baseball: Purple Parallel: 342 Jayson Werth Nationals
2016 Topps Baseball: New Era?: 1 Bryce Harper Nationals

2016 Topps Baseball: First Pitch:
FP-1 Jeff Bauman Boston Bombing Survivor Red Sox
FP-2 Jake Gyllenhaal Actor Red Sox (cameo of Jeff Bauman)
FP-4 Brady Kahle Red Sox - Kid who sold baseball card collection to help pay for his friends brain cancer treatment. Cameo of Wally The Green Monster.
FP-5 Keith Urban Musician Dodgers
FP-7 Chance The Rapper Hip-Hop "artist" White Sox
FP-9 Craig Sager Reporter Cubs
FP-10 Jojo Fletcher Bachelorette (reality personality) Dodgers
FP-12 Tom Watson Golfer Royals

FP-6 Aubrey Plaza Actress Dodgers - Love her Mostly just seen her in commercials. At times she reminds me of Allison Scagliotti (Warehouse 13, Stitchers)

Allison Scagliotti as Claudia Donovan in Warehouse 13 Season 4 Episode 15 "Instinct"

2016 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots:
M-4 Wally The Green Monster Red Sox
M-13 Dinger Rockies
M-20 Fredbird Cardinals
Mascots are one of my niche PCs as is evident from my Mascot Monday series of posts.

2016 Topps Baseball: Spring Fever: SF-29 Bryce Harper Nationals
2017 Topps Stadium Club Baseball: Scoreless Streak: SS-SS Stephen Strasburg Nationals
2017 Topps Baseball: Refractor? 212 Tanner Roark Nationals

2017 Topps Baseball: Gold: 327 Danny Espinosa Nationals 1501/2017

2015 Topps Archives Baseball: WF-8 Will Ferrell Giants

BASKETBALL: 5 cards 1 sticker no dupes that I know of.

2013-14 Panini Basketball Stickers: 154 Bradley Beal Wizards

2003-04 Fleer Ultra Basketball:
33 Juan Dixon Wizards
130 Jared Jeffries Wizards
Gold Medallion: 130 Jared Jeffries Wizards die-cut curved corner

2002-03 Fleer Genuine Basketball: Names of the Game: NG 7 of 15 Michael Jordan Wizards

2001-02 Topps Basketball: Top Tandems: TT6 Michael Jordan and Richard Hamilton Wizards

FOOTBALL: 1 card not a dupe.

1971 Topps Football: Game Insert: 7 O.J. Simpson Bills

HOCKEY: 4 cards 3 possible dupes.

1993 Classic Games 4 Sport Collection: 253 Manon Rheaume Atlanta Knights

1993 Classic Games Pro Hockey Prospects: The possible dupes.
1 Manon Rheaume
2 Manon Rheaume
100 Manon Rheume
Manon Rheume one of my PC Players and sort of a niche PC as well.

So yeah this post barely makes it into the end of January to preserve my bare minimum one post a month quota.

2012 Opening Day Macots Set

2012 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots Set

2012 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots: M-2 The Bird Baltimore Orioles

I originally started drafting this post ages ago. Like a ton of other posts on this blog. Yeah I have more than a few dusty posts in my drafting queue here and on my other two blogs. A very long while back (around 2013 something) from Ebay I got the 2012 Topps Baseball Opening Day Mascots insert set (numbered M1-M25). Got it for $22.99 + $3.50 shipping. Not a steal or a deal but I have seen them for way more.

The Opening Day set is almost identical to the flagship set with the exception of the "Opening Day" logo with the red, white, and blue bunting on the front. For players they usually use the same photo from the flagship set, but not always. The Mascots are not part of the regular flagship set they are the only picture in most cases of the mascot for that year. Some of them make cameo appearances on player cards or their team cards. I recall some years they have had variant picture cards for some of the players interacting with the mascots for special short prints. The backs of the cards are like the flagship backs not much different. The card numbers for the mascot cards for 2012 use the "M - #" format. There are 25 cards in the set. I used to mistakenly call it a "sub-set", but the numbering indicates it is a separate insert set.

2012 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots: M-2 The Bird Baltimore Orioles Back

Most of the 30 MLB teams have mascots, the Angels, Dodgers and Yankees are the only teams without an official, or unofficial mascot. Years ago the Yankees had a mascot from 1979-1981 named Dandy he was a strange looking beast. I couldn't decide which picture to post from my searching so I didn't. You'll have to Google, or Bing or Yahoo search to see what the fella looked like. I'm not sure if I'll get around to featuring him at all since I don't think he is officially on a card, even though the blog? Baseball Think Factory dot org has a mock-up 2011 Topps Opening Day card showing him. The Cubs used to be mascotless but in 2014 they announced Clark the Cub as their official mascot, their first official mascot in ages. In 2012 for this set Clark was not yet discovered. The only other team mascot NOT in this set is Lou Seal of the Giants, for some reason he was left out of this set, yet he is in others. In some cases a team has more than one mascot, but only the official mascot or the most popular one is shown in this set. I hate when they leave some of these guys out.

An odd thing about this set is the card for Homer The Brave of the Atlanta Braves is the only card that is landscape (horizontal) oriented. The rest are the standard portrait (normal vertical) orientation.

2012 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots: M-8 Homer Atlanta Braves

Front and Back

M-1 Bernie Brewer Brewers
M-2 The Oriole Bird Baltimore Orioles
M-3 Ace The Blue Jays
M-4 Baxter The Bob Cat Diamondbacks
M-5 Fredbird Cardinals
M-6 Raymond Rays
M-7 Mr. Met Mets
M-8 Homer The Brave Braves
M-9 Rangers Captain Rangers

M-10 Pirate Parrot Pirates
M-11 Billy The Marlin Marlins
M-12 Paws Tigers
M-13 Dinger Rockies
M-14 Phillie Phanatic Phillies
M-15 Slugger Royals
M-16 Wally The Green Monster Red Sox
M-17 Gapper Reds
M-18 Slider Indians

M-19 TC Bear Twins
M-20 Swinging Friar Padres
M-21 Southpaw White Sox
M-22 Screech Nationals
M-23 Mariner Moose Mariners
M-24 Stomper Athletics
M-25 Junction Jack Astros

Today (Monday 03 April, 2017) is Home Opening Day for my Homies the Washington Nationals they kick things off at home with the Marlins. Screech will be there cheering on the Nats.

2012 Topps Opening Day Baseball: Mascots: M-22 Screech Washington Nationals
Front and Back

Look for my weekly occasional feature on this blog "Mascot Monday".

COTW: AAGPBL Maddy English

1994 Ted Williams Baseball 95 Maddy English AAGPBL Racine Belles

You guessed it, it is the end of the month and I didn't have anything prepared so I am rushing something out to make my self-appointed blogging quota of at least one post per month. Fortunately for this month I sill have a few images that I have uploaded to the photo album of this blog that I haven't blogged about here. I scanned this card and talked about elsewhere. I had posted this card sometime last year I think over at the TCC forum in one of those all-out contests where contestants show off cards they have that fit a certain category as picked by the contest holder/judge and then usually forum members vote on which they think is the best. I came in third over all I think. I forget what the category was, maybe female athletes, but this is one of the cards I posted. A few years back I used to use my photobucket to post pics on the forums, but I don't use "the bucket" much any more. I mainly just keep it as an alternate storage space. At that time I started using the albums from the blogger blogs since I could then easily blog about any cards I posted on the forums, or blog about something first then post on the forums.

So here we go a single card from the 1994 Ted Williams Baseball set. I may have blogged about this set before or the Ted Williams card company that made the set. If not you can Google the card company (or Bing if people Bing anymore). It is one of the seven cards from the "Women of Baseball" subset that features key players from the AAGPBL (All American Girls Professional Baseball League) the woman's league featured in the movie A League of Their Own about women's baseball during WWII.

 1994 Ted Williams Baseball 95 Maddy English AAGPBL Racine Belles

(Front and Back)

3 Cards Including A Dupe In A Bat Envelope

I'm not sure what is more exciting about this particular PWE I received the cards or the stamp that was used. OK the cards are what really excited me and the stamp was just an added bonus.

On a typical day last month (January 2016) I got two PWEs in the mail. One PWE had a card I bought from Ebay that I will talk about some other post and the other had 3 cards I got from Sportlots. All 3 cards were from an auction with a .25¢ opening bid plus .99¢ shipping (combined somewhat).

1968 Topps Football: 2 cards both cards a bit offcenter borderline miscut.
106 Ed Meador Rams coin rub cartoon on back totally blank must have been a dud.

(Front and Back)

107 Fred Cox Vikings back cartoon is regular printed one.

(Front and Back)

1963 Topps Baseball:
69 Bud Zipfel Senators. When I bid on this one unfortunately I didn't realize I already had it. Fortunately this one is in better condition than the one I had. So it is an upgrade.

( Front and Back)

Oh a cool thing about the PWE is the stamp was a Batman Forever stamp.

In the long run I'm not sure if I will actually keep the stamp.

Trading Thursday: A Fifth Of February

 TRADING THURSDAY:
04 Feb 2016
UPDATED: 26 Sep 2018

Trade Info | Master Want List | What I Collect

Oops I goofed on the title for this week. I was thinking Thursday was the fifth for some reason. It is only the fourth.

OK so my followers count is now back up to 100. Yay and all that. Regarding trading I do admit I still owe a few people some packages from either an outstanding trade agreement from way back or contest winnings lot or what-have-you. It nags at me from time to time and the nagging is getting more intense. For the most part I know who I owe but there are a few I need to double check what it is I need to send. If you think I owe you some cards contact me and remind me what I am supposed to be sending your way.

This Week's Offerings:

Yeah that says what it means.

I am just going to list a whole bunch of cards right now. I won't post individual scans as my original concept of this series of posts was to be. Over time it would be too much of a chore and I would be limited to how many cards I could mention in a post. I can scan on request if needed.

BASEBALL:
1988 Donruss/Leaf All-Star Pop-Ups all "Unpopped" No Numbers:
Dwight Gooden Mets
Mark McGwire As
Ryne Sandberg Cubs
Dave Winfield Yankees (2)
1991 Topps Cracker Jack Micro 17 Mark Langston Angels - has two light creases one can be seen front and back the other just the front
1999 Upper Deck Choice Starquest Blue:
SQ10 Chipper Jones Braves
SQ19 Scott Rolen Phillies
2009 Goodwin Champions Memorabilia Series: GCM-BH Bill Hall Brewers all gray mesh swatch in "M"
2011 Topps Baseball: Diamond Anniversary "crushed ice" variant 466 Johnny Damon Rays
2012 Topps Bowman Chrome Baseball: 1st Card: BDPP23 Barrett Barnes Pirates
2013 Topps Baseball: Emerald Parallel: 164 Lucas Harrell Astros
2013 Topps Heritage Baseball:
317 Lance Berkman Rangers
358 Casey Kotchman Indians
2013 Topps Tier One: Relic: TOR-EH Eric Hosmer Royals all white mesh #d 334/399

BASKETBALL:
1994-95 Classic Rookies Basketball (College Unis): Rookies: 5 Kevin Garnett USA uniform (Timberwolves) (2)
2003-2004 Upper Deck Basketball: LeBron's Diary LJ8 LeBron James Cavaliers
2008-09 Topps Chrome Basketball: 201 Courtney Lee Magic
2013-14 Panini Elite Basketball:
53 Deron Williams Nets
91 Andre Miller Nuggets
172 Andray Blatche Nets
198 Ty Lawson Nuggets

FOOTBALL: 
2004 Topps Bazooka Football: Bazooka All-Stars: BAS-RW Roy Williams Cowboys all blue mesh Jersey Relic
2008 Bowman Chrome Football: BC159 Justin Fargas Raiders

Previous Offerings: 

Previous posts/offers are listed here.

Experiment Number One: 

CFL Trading:

If you would like to see a scan of any card I've mentioned please contact me and I can either Email the image or post in one my Picasa Web Albums (or my ancient Photobucket)

Strive For '65 Status Saturday: Been SportLotin'

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:
23 January 2016
Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List

 Current card count: 246/598 (248/600) 41.5%

As I mentioned last status update post (the first of this kind of post sort of) I did some ordering on Sportlots. The first cards that came in (last Saturday of curse the day my last update was posted) were all from one dealer at $1.00 each. There were five more modern cards with them from the 2003 Topps Bazooka set, but that doesn't matter here for this post. This post and any later posts will only mention cards from the 1965 Set build, even if it was just one card from a box of thousands.

I will list the cards newest arrivals listed first and grouped as they came.

The Latest Additions:

Friday 22 Jan 2016: 7 cards from Canada
46 Bob Lee Angels VG
47 Tommy Harper Reds VG
52 Ed Roebuck Phillies VG
57 St. Louis Cardinals Team Card VG
74 Red Sox Rookie Stars: Rico Petrocelli and Jerry Stephenson VG
82 Braves Rookie Stars: Santos Alomar and John Braun VG
431 Cardinals Rooke Stars: Nelson Briles and Wayne Spiezio EX

Wednesday 20 Jan 2016: One '65 card only
60 Jim O'Toole Reds VG/EX

Tuesday 19 Jan 2016: Wow I tied my record for most packages received for a card mail day at 13 packages (3 bubble mailers, 10 PWEs). Not all had 1965 cards, but I got a total of 13 cards to add to this set. Most of the envelopes had 2 or 3 cards with 4 cards being the most cards in an envelope (that one had no '65s) So here we go for this day:

64 Lou Burdette Cubs EX/NM

4 NL 1964 Home Run Leaders: Willie Mays Giants, B. Williams Cubs, J Callison Phillies, D. Cepeda Giants, Jim Hart Giants VG/EX
209 Pittsburgh Pirates team card VG has crease

19 Gates Brown Tigers EX/NM

338 Philiadelphia Phillies team card VG/EX

83 George Thomas Tigers EX

173 Detroit Tigers team card VG Front blot thing right side, back very clean

29 Felix Mantilla Red Sox VG front has medium to dark gum stain, dent/ding indentation left side by team banner
78 Dal Maxvill Cardinals EX/NM
426 Milwaukee Braves Team Card EX Back off center on bottom part of a cartoon top is on right.

9 AL 1964 Pitching Leaders: Dean Chance Angels, Gary Peters White Sox, W. Bunker Orioles, J. Pizarro White Sox, D Wickersham Tigers Overall good offcenter to bottom some back has some pencil marks underlining all the Chicago players.

36 Bobby Wine Phillies Excellent front has some printing goof dots on players hat and a light printing streak line.

423 Jesse Gonder Mets - In Excellent shape

Received on Saturday 16 Jan 2016: One package 3 cards.

61 Chris Cannizzaro Mets (The guy whose name was misspelled, well missing the first name initial actually, on checklist no. 1 card 79 to make that variant)

151 Kansas City Athletics Team Card - Very off-center to the bottom edge, very noticeable on the back

234 Chicago White Sox Team Card